when technology fails - or - "dead in the water"

I hate it when technology fails. This morning I was in the middle of replying to a post here on TB, and my ISP's name server went down. Suddenly, no more web access. Had to save off the reply in a Word document, move it over to the other machine (which uses a different system), and post it from there. We come to depend on our technology, don't we? The moral of the story seems to be, "always have a backup". Truth be told, that's one of the reasons I have "two of everything" when it comes to basses, amps, and cabs. Once I had an amp die in the middle of a gig, and that was enough to leave this lesson indelibly etched in the engrams of my brain. Has your technology ever malfunctioned at a critical moment? What did you do?

hey non..........
recently my car has been not staring intermittently, but will about 10 minutes later without fail, meanwhile my cell phone has been randomly cutting out with a full signal, (i thought it was my plan, but my daughter's phone has no such problem - of course not, hers is cheaper - and no i don't have a house phone anymore). That's ok, cause i was more pissed when the screen on my out of warranty laptop started failing, (700 bucks for a new one, better to get a new laptop eventually), i don't have a desktop so it was off to get a used 15" monitor, old keyboard and usb mouse. About that time the dvd-r drive stopped reading data (plays dvds great - oh joy), and the cd-rw drive failed entirely. I was going to get an external dvd rw drive anyway, but since i had to buy the other stuff it left me a little cash poor.

My eden 400 developed an annoying problem with the input stage where after being run for about 10 minutes it would have a volume drop off and then just stop, (replacing the tube doesnt help) i have to bring it to a shop. Fortunately, the effects return has so much gain on it, (and is before the eq) that i can plug straight into the return and keep playing. Talk about a gig saver. I've been putting that repair off, i mean heck, i have a preamp and a stewart 2.1! OF course a week ago channel b of the stew died mid gig. Once again, fortunately the stew's channels are completely independent, and each side can do 2 ohms, so i was able to plug a 4 ohm and 8 ohm cab into channel a and keep playing. Double fortunate that right before that the input jack on my tobias 4 died during practice and not at a gig. That scared my guitar player so much that even after the repair he insisted on bringing his jazz bass along.

Consumer electronics suck. So do cars. Lately i've been realizing that i spend 1/2 my money on services/utilities, and the other half on items which break.